Remember after Star Was III: Revenge Of The Sith when George Lucas said that the Star Wars story was over? Yeah, turns out he was telling porkies, the beardy little git.

Because, desperate to run his one good idea so far into the ground that it ends up biting magma, George Lucas is about to start production on a brand-new Star Wars TV series. And you have to hand it to George Lucas – it's an impossibly clever move. After all, why else would he bother producing a 100-episode Star Wars spin-off TV series that doesn't feature any of the characters or situations from any of the Star Wars movies that people hold so dear unless it was all just an elaborate ruse to make his Star Wars prequel movies look slightly less crap in comparison? Clever, clever move – as is George Lucas' next project: a confrontational Jeremy Kyle-style TV talkshow hosted by Howard The Duck.

George Lucas is currently producing the highly-anticipated Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, or rather he would be if people stopped blabbing the plot and stealing documents all the time. So, as a last-ditch attempt to get people to stop pestering him for spoilers about the Indiana Jones movie, George Lucas has smartly diverted attention away from it by bringing up something to do with the only other popular thing he's ever done – George Lucas has started to yak about the Star Wars TV show.

No, not the Clone Wars cartoon or the Ewoks cartoon or the Droids cartoon or the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special – George Lucas is talking about a brand-new Star Wars TV show. One that contains everything that people loved about the original Star Wars movie, except without Darth Vader. Or Luke Skywalker. Or Yoda. Or the Death Star. Or anything at all to do with the original Star Wars movie. And is 100 hours long. E! Online reports:

The head Jedi confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Lucasfilm has "just begun work" on a new live-action spinoff that will bring the Star Wars mythology to the small screen… it will be completely Skywalker free and instead center on supporting characters. He admitted he was taking a risk that viewers—save the die-hard geeks who turn up at the  Star Wars Celebration conventions in Greedo and Princess Leia getups—might not warm to Jedis, Sith and droids largely unfamiliar to them. "The Skywalkers aren't in it—it's about minor characters," the 63-year-old Lucas told the newspaper. "It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It's completely different."

Yes! A 100-hour exploration of the musical adventures of the Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes cantina band! That is exactly the TV series we knew George Lucas had in him.

Joking aside, now that another Star Wars movie has been firmly ruled out, it'll be interesting to see how George Lucas manages to transfer the Star Wars mythology to television's reduced budgets while still maintaining the berserkoid frothing Star Wars devotion he's enjoyed from fans over the last 30 years. For example, we're especially looking forward to the early episode where the heroic Lomerc Rachaa takes the magic space-bus to a planet that looks almost identical to Dagenham town centre to wage polite war on the evil JJB Sports salesman who won't give him a refund on his trainers because he's already worn them a couple of times, innit.

Seriously, it's a good thing that nobody else who was directing movies in 1977 has spent the last three decades furiously inventing increasing-loopy spin-offs from their one good idea, isn't it. Although, having said that, the world might finally be ready for that Smokey And The Bandit: Robot Dinosaur Detectives show we've been dreaming about for so long. 

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Star Wars TV Series Coming Soon – E! Online